How to Make Night Lights Using Wine Bottles

Do you want to recycle your empty wine bottles into something useful? This time of year it is common to go through several bottles of wine and also have many overnight guests who may not know their way around your house well, especially at night. This can lead to emergency trips to the hospital for broken toes and falls. Protect your guests, kids, and delicate furniture by making nightlights and placing them throughout your house.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Wine Bottle
• Christmas Lights
• Coat Hanger (opt)

1. These little nightlights are quick and easy to make and use up a couple of the things most people have laying around their house, extra strings of Christmas lights and empty wine bottles. Not only do they make great nightlights, they are very pretty when used to decorate for a party.

2. Gather your materials together. Make sure your wine bottles are clean and empty. (This can also be a great excuse to go empty a few bottles of wine-you need to have them empty, right?) Also, make sure your Christmas lights work. Even if a few of the bulbs are burnt out, the nightlight will still work, it just won't be quite as pretty. At the very least though, half of the bulbs should light up. Shorter strands are better too. If the strand of lights is too long they won't all fit inside the bottle.

3. The color of the lights you use depends on you. If you want to just use a set you have laying around-go for it. If you want a regular night light, red is great since it doesn't affect your night vision and so won't make it hard for you to go back to sleep. White will wake you up the most, but looks lovely and matches any décor. For a Christmas effect, use a multi-colored strand. I really like green. Whatever color you want to use, you should have one strand per bottle.

4. Now, plug the Christmas lights into the wall and leave them on for fifteen minutes or so.

5. When you come back, test the temperature of the bulbs with your hand. Are they hot? If they are very warm, don't use them for this project. Some older strands of lights get extremely hot and shouldn't be used. The confined space inside of the wine bottle will hold in the heat and make the strand get even hotter which could become a problem, so play it safe and don't use those really hot strands for this project or on your tree.

6. Stretch out the strand of lights in front of you so it won't get tangled. Hold the Christmas lights from the end of the strand without a plug or if there are plugs on both ends fold it in half and start in the middle. With the wine bottle in your lap, push each of the light bulbs inside. Work somewhat carefully since breaking a bulb is a hassle.

7. After all the bulbs are inside the bottle or you can't fit anymore in place the nightlight where you want it and plug it in. If the cord hanging out of the bottle doesn't quite reach you can pull out a little more so it's long enough.

8. If you have bulbs hanging out of the bottle that are lit and they look ugly you can replace them with burnt out bulbs so that they aren't as noticeable. This will only work if you have a strand that stays on even if bulbs are burnt out. This is also a great way to connect several bottles to the same strand but not have lights showing in between the bottles. If the bottle is set on a table with a tablecloth, you can cut a small hole in the cloth and feed the plug through and then into the wall socket. This will hide any extra length under the table and cloth.

9. Now just unplug the lights from the wall during the day or use a handy little timer and set it so that the lights only come at night.

Tips & Warnings

• Coating a clear bottle with different colors of crepe paper, lace, or window frosting before filling with lights can make different effects, some of which are quite lovely.

• A lit bottle on each step of a staircase looks nice and will help people see the steps better.

• These are great to line the driveway with too.

• Don't ever cover the top of the bottle unless using cool burning LED lights. Else the heat from the lights won't have any place to go.

• If using outside use sensible caution and only use when dry. Or if using outdoor light bulbs, set the bottles sideways so they don't fill with water.

Resources

• How to Think Like a Crafty Recycler